Thanks for your clues for CATHERINE. There were two excellent hidden answers: JollySwagman's "A bit of a tomcat, her inextinguishable lust was renowned" and chastelordarcher's "Girl's souvenir, eh? Tack some brought back". Baerchen summed up Mrs Dickens poignantly in "Girl - extraordinarily nice - nursing broken heart" and the winner is a cryptic definition from machiajelly with an allusion to Bob Dylan and/or Absolutely Fabulous: "This wheel's on fire". Your suggestions for another clue are sought below.

The news in clues

...for the BOSTON TEA PARTY. Not topical in itself, but the movement counterintuitively inspired by that protest couldn't be more so, as the gangs within the US Republican Party have been contemplating which of Sleazy, Divorcey, Gropey, Conspiracy, Starey, Forgetful and/or Romney has the best chance of supplanting Obama.

And so in Monday's Guardian, Brendan announced his theme with a clue for CIRCUS CLOWNS, a teasing reference to the Iowa caucus candidates: Michelle BACHMANN was split into a German composer and a German novelist and two of the pairs of down clues - CAMPOSANTO and RUMP; AGING and RICH - hid politicians as you read downwards.

The sharpest reference in this delightful puzzle was to the front-runnner...

24d Republican with wealth, primarily flip-flopping (6)

...recalling as it does Mitt ROMNEY's claim that he used a bucket as a loo when he did missionary work in France, in a humble home of which the son of the mission president remarked: "I would describe it as a palace".

Themes and tricks

Thursday morning saw Guardian solvers leaf to the penultimate page, clock the setter's name and coo: "ooh, it's a new one" before wondering about their first-time foe: would he or she prove to be difficult? Mischievous? Amusing?

One thing we learned about Qaos, perhaps unsurprising for a newer setter, is that we can probably expect themes. Thursday's puzzle certainly ticked the Amusing and Inventive boxes, and its topic was summed up in this clue...

22d Fruitdrink, swallowedvery quietly (5)

...for APPLE, the grid also featuring MACINTOSH, Steve JOBS and in one down clue above another, the company's '90s slogan THINK DIFFERENT.

That this prompted me to recall advertising posters which began...

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules.

...and so meant that I was suppressing righteous bile and appalled vomit for the rest of the puzzle is, honestly, my only quibble, and a minor one. Roll on the next Qaos!

Music, TV and film

Maybe it's how the A and the Es fall: there's something setters like about Adele. This week, Nimrod - known locally as Enigmatist - used the singer...

8d Young singerneedingassistanceto enterCommonwealth city (8)

...to indicate ADELAIDE, while Aardvark had the poor woman on a crash diet caused by an accident...

7d Adele, with armbroken, losesastone (7)

...just to clue EMERALD. Let's keep an eye or two open for whether the disappearing Adele or Charles Dickens gets more cryptic cameos in 2012.

Cluing coincidence

The same kind of answer in two of Tuesday's puzzles, clued with two surface meanings that each snappily depicted a scene. The Times's resembled the advice of Britain's tersest, bleakest agony aunt...

16ac Islovedead? Then split up (7)

...for ISOLATE, while Gordius in the Guardian sounded more like a cautionary tale about the importance of backing up your documents...

17ac Newidealost as disconnected (8)

...for ISOLATED.

Blue clues

Happily for those of us who have been held at gunpoint in a swingers' club in a remote industrial estate outside Baden-Württemberg (if you haven't tried it, I don't recommend it), Monday's Telegraph, with its clue "Swingers' bar", was merely looking for a good clean TRAPEZE.

Sounds rude, but isn't. Conversely, any minutes spent trying to find the wordplay in this Independent clue...

9d Crack construction worker shows up on site (8,6)

...would seem to have been time wasted, as the answer is a phrase which I see is in the new edition of Chambers dictionary, defined like this:

the cleavage at the top of the buttocks revealed above low-hanging trousers when a person, esp a workman, bends down.

So. Nimrod was giving us a pretty straightforward definition of BUILDER'S BOTTOM. Thanks for that.

Crosswords about crosswords

In Monday's Independent, Quixote - known locally as Pasquale - asked you to identify...

11ac Where a setter may be out of favour? (2,3,8)

The answer is not ON THE INTERNET, though some days you'd be tempted to consider pencilling that in, such is the howling wrath you find online about such-and-such a puzzle having too much literature / being too hard / being too easy / being too funny / not having enough literature and so wearyingly on. The actual answer is, of course, IN THE DOGHOUSE.

Of course, we all meet moments where the info sought by the setter meets a gap in our knowledge. One of my manifold gaps is cricket. Every time I think I'm on the verge of following the sport, something intervenes. One Sunday last summer, approaching a village green, I could see whites and, crucially, an inviting bench by a pie- and pint-selling pub. "This is it," I cried. "I'll be converted by the end of the afternoon and will doubtless be hoping for Wisden come Christmas."

Then the sky was shattered by the cumbersome sound of The Big Pink singing "These girls fall like dominos", followed with Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye by fictional band Steam, and as I realised that the bombast of Twenty20 was being forced through school-fête-grade speakers, I accepted that cricket will remain, for me for the moment, merely a way of indicating various letters like O via "duck" and XI via "side". That is, as long as setters carry on using them. In Wednesday's Guardian, Paul seemed on first reading to be suggesting that we've seen too many DOOSRAs...

2d Cricketing references have gone on too long (7)

...until you realised that the answer was OVERRUN. Now, a previous potential entry point to cricket for me was a band named after a formula used to revise run targets. So how would you clue DUCKWORTH-LEWIS METHOD?

Clue of the Week

Finally, all that Republican wrangling in Brendan's puzzle added still more misdirection to a clue that would have been wholly charming in any context...

13ac Press Conferences to produce material for this? (5)

...once you see that the Conferences are pears, pressed for some refreshing (Rick) PERRY. Proost!